Challenge To Kirk
With students and so many
faculty members adopting an egocentric
view of the dispute, the
challenge for Columbia President
Grayson Kirk and Vice-President
David Truman was enormous. Barricaded
inside University buildings
were the protesters whose real
allegiance was probably to protesting
and not to the issues they
were demonstrating about. Meeting
in committees and speaking
out throughout the campus were
faculty members who could only
agree on two points: some form
of punishment should be meted
out to the SDS followers; and
things had to be changed. beyond
that they could not formulate
policy together, except for being
readily critical of administrative
action.
There would be little help from
the non-protesting students either.
This was predictable. Columbia is
composed of a number of fairly
decentralized, independent schools
and departments which forms spa-
rate social entities. Some of these
schools are not located on the
Morningside Heights campus and
are not involved with the life there.
It was doubtful that the students
in these divisions would counter protest.
Nor were many students
attending school on Morningside
Heights apt to feel outraged
enough to oppose SDS. Logically,
the students most committed to
the name of Columbia, and the
students, incidentally, who were
most likely to favor the new gym,
were the male undergraduates. This
is understandable; Columbia is
Alma Mater to them. Most graduates
who attended colleges elsewhere
are emotionally committed
to other schools. The undergraduates
number only 3400 students
out of 15,000 who study at the
Morningside Heights campus.
